Month: April 2018

I recently come across this video about Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo speaking about genuine love and I feel deeply touched and inspired by it. It’s not the first time that I dwell in this topic. I have been reading and reflecting on myself to try to understand how do I feel love? give love? and receive love? And when I first encountered the concept of genuine love, I was truly moved and inspired to be able to love like that. Since then, I’ve been learning and training myself to be able to love people genuinely and also to inspire my love ones be able to do the same thus hopefully we able to collectively create an environment where everybody is genuinely be happy and having peace in the mind.

Transcript:

The problem is always that we mistake the idea of love for attachment. We imagine that the grasping and clinging that we have in our relationships shows that we love. Whereas actually, it is just attachment which causes pain because the more we grasp, the more we are afraid to lose then if we do lose, then of course, we are going to suffer. Attachment says “I love you therefore I want you to make me happy.” and Gunuine love says “I love you therefore I want you to be happy. If that includes me, great! If it doesn’t include me, I just want your happiness.” So it’s a very different feeling. Attachment is like holding very tight. But genuine love is like holding very gently nuturing, but allowing things to flow not to be held tightly. The more tightly we hold on to others, the more we will suffer. But it’s very hard for people to understand that because they think that the more we hold on to someone the more it shows that they care about them. But it’s not, it’s really just that they’re trying to grasp at something because they are afraid that otherwise they themselves will be hurt. Any kind of relationships which imagines that we can fulfill ourselves through another is bound to be very tricky. Ideally people should come together already feeling fulfill within themselves and just therefore appreciating that in the other rather than expecting the other to supply that sense of well-being which they don’t feel on their own. Then there’s a lot of problems. And also along with the projection which comes with romance where we project all our ideas, ideals and desires, and romantic fantasies on to the other which the other cannot possibly fulfill. Once you get to know them you realize that it’s not prince charming or Cinderella. It’s just a very ordinary person who’s also struggling. And unless one is able to see them with, to like them as well as feel desire for them and to also have loving kindness and compassion then it’s going to be a very difficult relationship.